bike shipment

I've been thinking about the bike shipment problem over and over. This is my situation:

I don't have a hard case (which I understood from previous posts/comments could range from 200 to 600$)

Bought a cheap road bike (second hand) which I use for training but don't want to keep because of too frequent flats due to fragile tires.

Will travel from Europe to SF then back to SF from LA and finally back to Europe.

Wouldn't it be simpler for me to buy a road bike in SF, and once in LA dump it somewhere? Sounds like wasting good money but it'd save considerable time and trouble. Besides should the price of the road bike be reasonable this solution might not be that much of a waste after all.

Comments {1}

(no subject)

you can probably get a reasonable (new/used) steel framed road bike for us$400-600. the bike won't be fabulous, but it will get you through the ride. if you're willing to take that kind of loss, then i'd think just getting a bike and then donating to alc would be fine. the cost of shipping to europe sounds prohibitive.

imho.

there are some used bike shops in the area in berkeley:http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/where2buy/bikestores.html